and if i told you to dance (would you?)
by tamadori
Summary: In which Piper tells Annabeth and Reyna to kiss and make up with absolutely no regard for the consequences. Boarding school AU.
1. part one

a/n: this is dumb and just an idea that wouldn't leave me alone. there'll probably be more parts 'cause this chapter was mostly just set up. nothing's changed except the demigod camps are boarding schools and there weren't any prophecies looming over anyone's heads.

* * *

Annabeth stormed out of the Student Council room, slamming the door to make sure everyone in the room knew just how upset she was. And with the way the door rattled on its hinges, she was sure everyone knew that she was extremely upset, to put it lightly. How could those Roman assholes think that they could come to her school and tell her how to run her Student Council? Well, they couldn't. Now, instead of being in the room and listening to their criticism, Annabeth was walking the distance between the student council room and her dorm.

"Cultural exchange? Yeah, right. They're from San Francisco, not Rome," Annabeth muttered to herself. Sure, the guys from Jupiter Boarding School were the children and descendants of Roman Gods while the students here at Half-Blood Boarding School (the name was still extremely uncreative to Annabeth) were the sons and daughters of Greek Demigods. However, seeing as both boarding schools were still in America, their "cultures" couldn't actually be that different and this cultural exchange was not that great of an idea.

And the leader of asshole gang, herself? Reyna Ramírez-Arellano. Admittedly, Annabeth didn't know much about her, but from the hour she had spent in the student council room prior to leaving, Annabeth had learnt that Reyna's lead position in the jerkass crew was well deserved. She had practically taken over the meeting with just a couple words and then spent the majority of the time criticizing the executive decisions that Half-Blood's student council had lined up before summer break. The killer part in all of this? Reyna's group would be at the school for the entire school year, so Annabeth couldn't just ignore her.

"Who even comes to another school for an entire year? Like, who's even running the student council back at their school?" Annabeth threw open the door to her room and practically threw herself at her bed. She considered screaming into her pillow, but really, this wasn't worth a full blown tantrum. Annabeth laid there with the pillow over her face until she heard a voice from the doorway.

"If you're trying to suffocate yourself, please don't do it while I'm here." Piper, her roommate and the student council's secretary must have just walked in. Piper pulled the pillow out of her grasp and Annabeth glared up at her.

"Not now, Piper. I'm still pretty upset."

"Well, I think it's now-or-never for me to give you this heads up. Reyna's going to be your roommate this year."

"What?" Annabeth jumped out of her bed, which was pretty dramatic but given the fact that she just learnt that Queen Criticism was her new roommate, dramatics were very appropriate.

"Yeah, the principal said it would be better for the exchange if each exchange student roomed with someone from our school." Piper started gathering up her luggage. Given that they each had arrived at the school the day before students were actually to start arriving to straighten up some student council business and welcome the exchange students, no one had gotten around to unpacking yet.

"First, they infiltrate my student council. And now the leader of the gang is infiltrating my room? This isn't right!"

"Annabeth," Piper sighed, "calm down. Reyna isn't that bad. A bit domineering? Yes. But not that bad."

"Where were you when she practically destroyed all of our hard work?" Annabeth crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at Piper.

"Yeesh, given my mom, I thought I'd be the more dramatic one in this friendship," Piper bit back. "Anyways, calm down. I'm out. I need to get the good bed in the room before that Hazel girl grabs it. See you later." Piper started making her way towards the door and Annabeth thought that, maybe, it was time to calm down a bit.

"Sorry, you're right. I was really looking forward to us rooming together again this year," Annabeth crossed the room and brought Piper into a hug, "Bye."

"From mad to affectionate? Woah, cool the dramatics." Piper chuckled as she returned Annabeth's hug. "Same here. At least we still have Chemistry, Greek Literature and PE."

"Ugh, why did you remind me about Literature? Get out of here before I keel over." Annabeth pushed Piper away from her.

"And with that," Piper raised her hand in a mock salute before picking up her suitcase and wheeling it towards the door, "I'm actually gone. See you at dinner." With that Piper left the room and right before Annabeth closed the door, she could hear Piper talking to someone in the hall.

Annabeth walked back over to her bed and sat down. She looked around the room. The white walls were still bare and her own suitcase was by her feet. She sighed. She would have to start unpacking soon. Annabeth stared at her suitcase and before she had finished building up her resolve, there were three quick knocks on her door.

Sighing once more, Annabeth walked over to the door and opened it, just to see Reyna there.

"Hey," Annabeth ground out. She opened the door wider to accommodate Reyna, who instead of replying, just began hauling her suitcase into the room.

"At Jupiter, the beds are bunk beds," was the first thing Reyna said to Annabeth that didn't sound condescending. And even then, just so.

"Really? Wow. That's actually amazing."

"I would appreciate less sarcasm, but I don't think you can help it. It's the sign of a baser wit."

Annabeth was a daughter of Athena for Zeus' sake. If Reyna thought she was about to get away with insulting her intelligence, she had another thing coming. "Disappointing comeback, but it's to be expected. I've always heard that Romans liked the bare necessities in life. Basic intelligence, minimal creativity and just a bit of manners. And, wow, you're really Roman."

Reyna rolled her eyes, "Good try." She almost immediately began unpacking her things and Annabeth had to respect her initiative. Annabeth was still wondering how late she would have to end up going to bed tonight because of right now, her bag just wasn't looking appealing at all. Especially because she knew of the mess that laid inside. She had been so busy with her internship and research that she barely had time to pack and she had basically just dumped her wardrobe and everything she needed into her suitcase and called it a night.

Reyna's suitcase, on the other hand, was packed so neatly that Annabeth was convinced it had taken her all summer to do so. It looked like the suitcase of someone who cared a lot about packing efficiently. Annabeth could tell that Reyna cared about doing everything efficiently from the "suggestions" (read as demands) that Reyna had made during the student council president. Annabeth appreciated efficiency but years at Half-Blood had made her grow into the laid-back (and very sloppy) mannerisms of practically everyone around her.

Anyways, Annabeth definitely wasn't about to start unpacking now when Reyna could use her haphazard packing as a reason to ream into her. Instead, she grabbed the book on modern architecture she had been leafing through all summer because of her internship and got lost in the diagrams of roofs, buildings and structures.

* * *

A bit later, Annabeth felt her phone vibrating against her leg. She checked the message. It was from the Student Council group chat.

Percy: guys! since we got here early they said wed have to get our own food since the kitchen staff arent done preparing the kitchen _

Annabeth: I said this, Percy, in the email I sent last week. Did you even read it?

Percy: uh…tl;dr? it was so long im pretty sure my phone crashed while loading it

Piper: ditto. like mine actually overheated loading one of the attachments.

Annabeth: Ugh. Anyways, guys, I have my car because I drove up. We can go somewhere for some.

Piper: what about the guys from Jupiter? even though Reyna is inhumanly like perfect I'm pretty sure they need food too.

Annabeth: One of them drove here behind their bus, I think. I'm actually not sure.

The conversation went dead for a few seconds. Annabeth considered asking Reyna if they had a way of getting food, but she would have to wake her up. Right when Annabeth was about to shout and wake Reyna up, her phone vibrated again.

Piper: Hazel said Reyna drove. Annabeth could you talk to her and update her? maybe get something sorted out?

Annabeth: Yeah, I will. She's sleeping now, though. I'll check in again later.

Leo: omg guys….im really feeling for tacos. im just putting that out there. just in case anyone was wondering.

Percy: yay tacos! good idea leo!

With the group delving into a discussion on just how awesome tacos were, Annabeth decided it was time for her to sort out the whole food situation with Reyna. How would she manage to wake up Reyna without undoubtedly unleashing the other girl's wrath upon herself? Annabeth had no clue. She looked around the room and promptly hit the jackpot. Reyna left her phone on her nightstand and, if Annabeth recalled correctly, Reyna had more than once unlocked it without using a passcode throughout the student council meeting.

Annabeth quietly and swiftly walked over to Reyna's phone. As quickly as she could, she took it up, found the alarm app and set an alarm to ring in five minutes. Annabeth dashed back to her bed and laid down, trying to look as comfortable and as busy as possible. She flipped through the pages of her architecture book, watching Reyna's bed out of the corner of her eye.

Annabeth was only halfway down a random page she decided to read when the most annoying alarm tone ever conceived started blaring in their room. Reyna's eyes cracked open and she reached over and stopped the alarm mere seconds after it started sounding. Annabeth was a bit impressed. It normally took her until the second round of alarming to even think of turning her phone off.

"I don't remember setting that alarm," Reyna muttered to herself but she shrugged her shoulders and let it go. Annabeth thanked the gods that Reyna didn't take out a spy kit, wipe down her phone and look for fingerprints. It was a distinct possibility with Reyna. She had walked into the Student Council Room with a ten-year plan, five hundred potential events and a small offering to the gods.

"Hey," Annabeth called out. "We have to get our own dinner tonight – the kitchen's not ready. I heard you had a car?"

Reyna nodded, "Yeah, I drove behind the bus."

"Okay, so I have my car, as well. We can take everyone out for dinner together. Can your car hold all the Jupiter people?"

"Mhm. It's a seven seater, so I can even drive some of your members if you don't have enough space."

"It's fine. Thanks for the offer, though." Wow. Did they just have a decent conversation? Was Reyna actually being nice? Annabeth was shocked but still far from believing Reyna was actually a half-way decent human being. "We're going for tacos, by the way. It's like a twenty minute drive."

"Okay, I'll let my people know." Reyna took her phone off her nightstand and sent off a text. Then, she threw her phone to Annabeth who barely had enough time to catch it. "Let's take each other's numbers. Text me when you guys are ready. We can meet in the parking lot." Annabeth quickly punched in her number and saved it. Not wanting to take the risk of throwing Reyna's phone and having it shatter against the wall, lamp or Reyna's ego, Annabeth walked over to the other girl's bed and gave it to her. Reyna immediately dialled her number and Annabeth heard her phone start vibrating on her bed.

"Okay. Now that everything's in order, I'm going to go take a shower. If you'll excuse me." In one fell swoop, Reyna gathered all her essentials and walked into their room's adjoining bathroom. Annabeth was once again taken aback at how polite Reyna seemed. It could have been like Piper said. Maybe she had misjudged her after all.

* * *

And maybe not. Once again they were in the Student Council room and, once again, Reyna was being the hugest asshole to every grace this side of New York. They were trying to finalize the semester's budget and start piecing a welcome back event together. Reyna proposed some start-of-semester academic workshops while Annabeth was insistent that they have the traditional game of Capture the Flag. Needless to say, neither one of them was backing down. Everyone in the room was wondering how the two of them managed to be civil, friendly almost, when they went to Taco Bell together. Percy wondered if they were just too hungry to fight. Leo thought it was the power of the miraculous crunch wrap. Either way, they were both hoping the two of them would stop fighting.

"Maybe we should calm down," Frank, Jupiter's secretary, suggested. He was a bit of a quiet guy so he went unheard over Reyna and Annabeth's rapidly escalating argument.

"We've always done Capture the Flag and we sure as hell aren't stopping now!"

"You guys could use the learning. Last night, that Percy character held up the line by asking if the combo came with a drink. It said so right on the menu!"

"It only took the cashier one second to answer his question!"

"One second more that I could have devoted to planning a really great welcome event!"

"This is kind of meaningless," Hazel, Jupiter's treasurer, said to the others. "We can do both events. They both won't cost all that much money and they come from different budgets."

"Piper, do something before they get physical," Percy whispered. He didn't want Reyna and Annabeth to hear him and take his comment as a suggestion.

Piper rolled her eyes. She hated using her Charmspeak but this meeting was going nowhere except down in flames. "Reyna, Annabeth, stop arguing and kiss and make up or something. We need to get on with the meeting."

In seconds, the room was hushed. But peace didn't remain for long. The second, unintentional part of Piper's command caught up to Reyna and Annabeth and, surely enough, they kissed right in the middle of the room with all of the Student Council members watching them. Hazel gasped. Piper chuckled nervously. Percy and Jason raised their eyebrows at each other. Leo flat out started laughing. Frank looked vaguely worried and Nico just looked blank.

The kiss went on for several seconds without comment. Percy, feeling at least partially responsible, asked the question on everyone's minds. "Are they not gonna stop?"

"I don't know," Piper answered, "but I'm afraid to say anything else."

"Reyna! Annabeth! Snap out of it!" Leo yelled at them through cupped hands.

This seemed to do the trick. Reyna and Annabeth parted and started at each other in a daze. A tense few seconds ticked by so slowly that Piper swore she could have rewatched all of Titantic. Then, Annabeth and Reyna were at it again.

"I can't believe you kissed me like that," Annabeth spat out, wiping her mouth furiously and taking a hundred steps back from Reyna.

"You kissed me," Reyna countered, "and very sloppily, I might add."

"Hey, my skills are top notch. Piper's Charmspeak just had my brain too fuzzy to properly access them."

"Oh, yeah? Prove it to me."

Not one to back down from a challenge, Annabeth closed the gap she had just created between herself and Reyna in two long strides, grabbed Reyna's waist and gave her the kiss of a lifetime. Several lifetimes, in fact. Heck, Aphrodite was going to watch this kiss and seethe with jealously at Annabeth's skills. This was all just to prove Reyna wrong, of course. Annabeth was a damn good kisser and Reyna was not going to make light of her skills. It was just supposed to be a short, very good kiss. Until Reyna started kissing her back and caused Annabeth to forget all about her previous intentions. After about a minute of awkward silence permeating the Student Council room, Leo coughed into his hand, reminding Annabeth and Reyna that they were not alone.

Annabeth stepped back slowly, and seemingly forgetting about the meeting at hand, she spun around and walked out the door. Reyna went after her immediately.

And the rest of the Student Council forgot about those two and went on to finalizing the welcome event on their own.


	2. part two

a/n: school's finally started this chapter. this story is probably gonna be a cliché storm - forced pair work, fake dating, maybe even a ridiculous love triangle.

* * *

Annabeth walked around the school for almost ten whole minutes after leaving the Student Council room. Her heart was pounding and she could still feel her face heating up. Why did she have to be a humongous idiot and kiss Reyna twice? Okay, the first time really wasn't her choice but the second time definitely was. She had been so heated up by Reyna's very rude (as usual) remarks and had to take action and, obviously, the only choice there was to kiss her and prove her wrong. Although, on further reflection, it probably wasn't the only choice, but it was the first one that came to her head to mend her wounded pride.

Annabeth had a bit of an issue with being a bit too proud. Once, she lost a spelling bee because she had been too haughty to ask them to use the word in a sentence. If anyone asked, Annabeth thought it was dumb to ask third graders to spell the word "Joule" anyways. Of course, she would have thought they meant "jewel" immediately. Honestly, no one leans what a Joule is until they start Physics. Gods, half of the people in her Physics class sophomore year still didn't even know what a Joule was after taking physics for all of freshman year. Annabeth was and is still so pissed that Mr. D wouldn't accept her heart-felt request (read as: her going to office and demanding a class change) to skip Physics I and Physics II.

And there was also that time she did the 5k run at her maximum running speed because that one daughter of Aphrodite, Drew or whatever, implied that she was a "nerd who probably couldn't even run for five minutes without keeling over and dying". Drew hadn't said it in that many words but Annabeth read between the lines and then proceeded to almost die just to prove her wrong. Annabeth won the 5k in 15 minutes and, at the finish line, keeled over and saw her life flash before her eyes. The ambrosia she got from the school nurse had been the second sweetest thing ever. The sweetest thing ever had been the shock on that Drew girl's face when she got the gold medal.

This whole kissing Reyna twice fiasco had just been another one of those impulsive pride-fix decisions. Those two kisses meant absolutely nothing. Annabeth willed her heart to calm down because the longer it kept beating like this, the more it was giving her the idea that maybe she felt something more than friendly for Reyna. This idea was ridiculous because she didn't even feel something friendly for Reyna to begin with and she wouldn't as long as Reyna kept being her annoying, arguementative self.

Annabeth felt a hand on her shoulder and she stopped walking. She reeled in her urge to give the person who stopped her a piece of her mind because she had to maintain her image as the frequently calm, always responsible Student Council President, even though it was only her and the other Student Council members on campus, anyway, so it had to be one of them.

"What the hell was that, Chase?"

Of course the person who stopped her had to be Reyna. The gods were not allowing her any peace.

"What was what?" Annabeth asked, knowing what Reyna was asking about but not wanting to broach the topic herself.

"You kissed me then you ran," Reyna said simply.

"I ran because I wanted to, "Annabeth returned. "It had no correlation to kissing you."

"So you run out of meetings all the time?"

"Yes. When the mood strikes." Reyna's eyebrows knit together, and while she wasn't exactly frowning before, she was now.

"Very well, don't tell me the real reason. I was an idiot for following you, evidently."

"Reyna," Annabeth sighed. She felt bad. Reyna hadn't followed her to egg her on. She was honestly concerned about Annabeth. "I didn't know how to deal. I didn't really mean to kiss you a second time. So, I ran."

"There's nothing to deal with here, Annabeth," Reyna looked at Annabeth pointedly. "I'm not suddenly in love with you. Unless you're feeling something, we're all fine."

"We're all fine," Annabeth confirmed, ignoring the very slight pang of what felt like disappointment at Rayna's admission of feeling nothing.

"Good. I think the others came to a decision without us, so I'm just going to go to our room. Want to walk back together?"

"I can't. I promised Piper I'd hang out with her at Taco Bell earlier."

"Alright. See you later then," Reyna started walking off without any hesitation. "You weren't so bad the second time, by the way."

It took Annabeth a few seconds to get what Reyna had said. When she came up with an adequate reply, Reyna was already long gone.

* * *

Surprisingly, it took Piper twenty minutes into their Netflix session before she shut the laptop and turned to Annabeth. Piper might want to deny it, but like her half-sisters, she had a bit of a nosy streak. Piper mostly refrained from outright gossiping about everyone, though, and Annabeth was grateful for that. Although, when it came to people she cared about, Piper was like the annoying aunt at the family reunion who wanted to know every detail about everyone's life.

"So, what's up with you and Reyna?" Piper asked cautiously, not wanting to set Annabeth off. While Annabeth was a genuinely level headed person most of the time, she had certain sore topics that led to endless sarcastic remarks or just straight up arguing.

"Nothing," Annabeth mumbled as she rolled her eyes. "According to her, anyways."

"Is there something according to you?"

"I told her there was nothing but I don't know," Annabeth admitted. "Maybe it's just some sort of familiarity. Like, I feel myself going down the same path I went with Percy. I hated him, then tolerated him, then I figured he wasn't so bad and then we were dating."

"So...," Piper took the time to raise one eyebrow, a handy trick that she had been practicing, at Annabeth. "You like her?"

"I don't," Annabeth replied immediately. "It's just that kissing her wasn't exactly awful, and when she spoke to me afterwards about it, she was so nice. It kind of amazed me."

"So, you like her." Reyna repeated, this time making sure Annabeth knew it wasn't a question.

"I don't. I really don't. Well, I'm like 99% sure I don't."

"If you say so," Piper offered, deciding to leave it at that. If Annabeth was so sure she didn't, Piper wasn't going to badger her. She did agree with Annabeth. Reyna and Annabeth's relationship almost mirrored Annabeth and Percy's old relationship. Except all the parties here were older, so Reyna and Annabeth's incessant arguing was kind of embarrassing, instead of cute and endearing.

"Where's your roommate anyway?" Annabeth had decided to take up Piper's silent offer to move the topic of conversation.

"Out with Frank, probably. I think they're dating. Call it my intuition."

"Yes, Piper. I, too, saw them hold hands very awkwardly and share their fries."

"Why did you ask where she was then? Since you're so smart?"

Annabeth rolled her eyes once more. "Whatever. Can we just get back to Pretty Little Liars or whatever it is you have me watching?"

Piper smiled and opened her laptop. "You can stop pretending you don't care now. You've watched like five seasons with me."

"Come on, I just want to know if I made the right guess."

"Whatever."

* * *

The last Sunday before school started was relaxing for Annabeth. She had unpacked everything, her room was neat and she had started the readings for some of her classes. She had to stay on top for the first couple of weeks because when Student Council started heating up, she wasn't afraid to let her school work hit the backburner. Her grades didn't suffer for it, but her participation and attendance sometimes did. It was just a generally good idea to be an insufferably good student the first few weeks and then ease it up when Student Council got busy.

So yeah, Annabeth spent most of her Sunday, reclining on her bed and reading. Reyna was also there at one point too but she wasn't that noticeable to Annabeth. Especially since she spent all of maybe one hour in the room before disappearing for the entire day. Annabeth and Reyna hadn't really spoken since their conversation after the kisses, and while Annabeth could tell Reyna wasn't ignoring her, neither of them was making an effort to actively befriend each other. This was fine by Annabeth, of course. She wasn't in a rush to make a new friend. Also, she could tell Reyna wasn't the "Oh my God, I love my new roommate so much and it's only been like 3 days!" sort, so she wasn't hurt by it or anything.

Plus, she beat Percy and Leo at FIFA and was treated to a free pizza.

All in all, Sunday was a great day.

* * *

Too bad Monday rapidly turned to shit. While she didn't outright hate Reyna, Annabeth acknowledged that one nice conversation was not going to change the fact that Reyna had yelled at her for almost an hour straight, twice, in Student Council. As such, she was hoping to avoid Reyna so as to not encourage more yelling. Walking into Literature a bit late and seeing Reyna was a hassle. Having to sit beside Reyna? An even larger hassle. At least she had Piper on her other side.

But the gods would not just leave it at that. Literally.

"Okay, guys," Dia, one of the nine muses, said as she leafed through a book. "I'm super busy this semester so I'm marking everything as pair work."

Literally everyone groaned but Dia just kept flipping through her book.

"Sorry," she murmured insincerely, letting everyone in the room know how not sorry she actually was. "Go ahead and start a count off. Go across the rows. 1 and 2 are together, 3 and 4, and so on."

When Annabeth counted and realized that Piper would be paired with some random and she had Reyna, she knew that her life sucked. When Piper actually said "10" and Dia grouped her with "9", Annabeth felt her hopes and dreams shatter. When she had to say "11", hear Reyna say "12", and then watch Dia write their names together on the board, Annabeth felt a large part of herself die. When she saw Leo wink at her in her periphery, Annabeth knew he was coming with her to the afterlife. Briefly, she also wished that Piper would stop talking about her with Jason and Leo.

Why did Dia have to put them in pairs anyways? As far as she knew, Dia wasn't the only one marking their work. She had eight sisters who were also goddesses of literature, science and pretty much everything else academic. Sure, they taught most of the other subjects, but the nine muses couldn't fool Annabeth. They switched places and taught each other's classes all the time. Surely, they could also help each other grade papers.

Reyna looked at the blonde and raised an eyebrow. "Why is everyone and everything throwing us together?"

Annabeth sighed, "Wish I knew."

* * *

This whole Literature situation called for some TLC, tremendously loud complaining. After dinner and then a walk to Piper's room, Annabeth got her opportunity.

"Piper, how could Dia do this to me?" Annabeth groaned as she sat down on Piper's (extremely comfortable) duvet. Hazel was once again missing.

"Reyna isn't that bad, Annabeth." Piper felt like she was comforting a child. Which was weird because Annabeth was normally so level-headed. Then again, Annabeth sometimes had acted this way about Percy before they had started dating, so maybe this was how she behaved when she liked someone.

"You're right. She isn't. I'd just like to avoid arguing in Student Council and then arguing over our Literature work."

"What makes you think you guys are going to argue?" Annabeth made some sort of "are you serious right now?" hand gesture at Piper. It looked vaguely threating but Piper was sure Annabeth was just trying to let out her frustration in some way.

"Call it my intuition."

"Yes, Annabeth. I, too, have seen you guys argue every time you're in the same room."

"Nice turning that one back on me."

"Anyways, you guys are clearly fated for each other or something. Even the gods have thrown you two together."

"Putting us into pairs once does not mean we are fated for each other."

"You guys are practically co-presidents. Roommates. A Literature pair for the entire semester. And you do know what they say about roommates, right?"

"What exactly do they say about roommates?"

"As roommates, you guys have to awkwardly experiment with each other. If it goes south, you must awkwardly avoid each other for the rest of your academic career."

"Hush up, Piper," Annabeth made a face. "We roomed together freshman and sophomore year, remember? We haven't experimented once."

"Not because I haven't been trying," Piper joked. "But once, your head was so full of Percy. Now, Reyna has stolen my chances by usurping me as your roommate.."

"Should have made your move on me over the summer then."

"No, Annabeth, the roommate card only works when school is in session and you're actively rooming together."

"You've put a lot of thought into this. Should I warn Frank? In fact, should Jason be worried?"

"He should not. I'm just teaching you the theory of roommate experimentation."

Annabeth stretched, deciding it was time to leave. "Well, I'm going to go back to my room to, factually, not experiment with my roommate."

"If you say so," Piper drawled. "Reyna looks fierce, anyway. You probably couldn't handle her for a second." Annabeth paused in the door frame.

"I'm sure I could, but you're definitely not going to bait me into trying."

"Shoot. Definitely thought that would have worked."

"Goodbye, Piper." Annabeth walked out and let the door close behind her. Piper just shook her head. This was going to be a long, long semester.


	3. part three

a/n: here we go. i feel like next chapter is going to have more development of the student council as a group with some really dumb summer camp ice-breaker realness.

* * *

Annabeth soon found out that being forced to do pair work with Reyna wasn't all that bad. Reyna was methodical and meticulous when it came to her work and she even understood the nuances in Literature that Annabeth's sometimes overly logical brain couldn't. For the last two weeks, they had met every Friday to complete their weekly Literature assignment that Dia insisted on giving even though she claimed to be overworked and underpaid (Annabeth was reluctant to ask exactly what a goddess' pay scale was supposed to look like). So, Annabeth and Reyna had built up a working partnership of sorts. One that was strained every time they stepped into the Student Council room, it seemed.

"You guys need to be more frugal," Reyna complained. "A Student Council bonding retreat at some hotel for a weekend? We can do this at the school for free!"

Annabeth sighed. Of course, Reyna would have an issue. This level of predictability was almost comforting. "Once again, it's a tradition. And it's not up for debate. We're doing it."

"This money could have easily been funneled into something much more productive."

"All of our clubs have all the budget they need. We can spare this amount of money. It's normally much cheaper but we have double the usual number of members this year."

"So, this is our faults?"

"I didn't say that but if you don't agree really quickly so we can start finalizing the plan, yes, it'll be your fault. Your. Singular."

"I really wish they'd kiss and stop arguing again," Percy whispered to Jason and Leo. Although it wasn't much of a whisper because the whole room heard him. There was suddenly silence as a level of never before seen awkwardness settled over the room. He chose to continue. "I'm just saying that you guys are making it harder to plan our bonding session that we are required to have." There were many murmurs of agreement and Annabeth took the time to look at all the sell outs she was on Student Council with. Sue her for trying to get Reyna to see some semblance of reason but she guessed it was time to take the meeting back on track.

"Okay," Annabeth said, clapping her hands. "I'm going to take a more authoritative stance since this is, by all means, still my Student Council. We are doing the hotel trip. No debates necessary. Today is Wednesday. We leave on Friday and return Sunday mid-day. If the people from Jupiter, namely Reyna, have a problem, then we, of Half-Blood, will gladly enjoy the double rooms we won't have to share. Coach Hedge, our faculty advisor, will be our chaperone. He will be making the necessary preparations. Meeting adjourned."

Annabeth looked over to Reyna expecting her to be fuming and ready to ignore the "no debates" part of her proposal. Instead, Annabeth was surprised to see Reyna looking impressed. That impressed look made her stomach do a little flip-flop thing. Crap. If this continued, Piper was going to be hitting her with an "I told you so" sooner or later. Also, her stomach would end up lopsided and she'd develop an ulcer or something.

People had started to clear out and Annabeth was the last to leave as always. Their meeting ran until dinner started so she had the unofficial task of making sure everyone picked up their things because no one except cleaning staff would be allowed to enter the building until tomorrow. It was something Thalia, the former Student Council President, had done and, well, to say Annabeth simply looked up to her was a bit of an understatement.

Once again, to her surprise, Reyna was waiting for her at the door. Annabeth couldn't hold her witty remark back. Especially since her stomach did that flip flop thing again and she lost a bit of control over her mouth. "Here for some overtime debating? Sorry, I can't pay you extra to not agree with me even more."

"Actually, I'm here to apologize. You're right. It's still your Student Council which you've graciously allowed us to participate in. And as invigorating arguing with you is, I will try not to overstep much more than I have already. The way you swiftly and deftly took charge was impressive and I feel there's something I could learn by looking toward you."

All of Annabeth's bite flew out of her. Wow, had Reyna always been this articulate because talk about attractive. Her apology was practically perfectly worded and it was scoring her some major points with Annabeth, for sure. Oh gods, Annabeth's reply had to be just as articulate so that Reyna wouldn't lose any of her newfound respect for her. What would she say? Was Reyna waiting for one now? She had to go now or forever hold her peace. The seconds were ticking by quickly like the Snapchat timer on a screenshot-worthy photo.

"Uh, sure," replied Annabeth very inarticulately. She found herself immediately feeling some level of self-hatred. "But just to be clear, your voices matters just as much as mine and the other members of my Student Council's. We should be able to discuss our concerns civilly. I don't know why everything always devolves so quickly when we're involved, to be honest."

"As I said before, I might play a hand in it. Arguing with you is very stimulating, to say the least." Reyna adjusted her messenger bag strap and began walking. Annabeth took one quick look around the room (if anyone left anything, they were screwed), grabbed her bag and began following Reyna.

"Is that so?" Annabeth asked, after briefly power-walking to catch up to Reyna.

"Yeah. Don't you feel it too? Isn't that why you keep engaging me?"

Not wanting to let Reyna know about her issues with maintaining her pride, Annabeth quickly agreed. "Definitely." After Annabeth's agreement, a silence fell over them and they continued their walk together until they left the main school building.

"I'm assuming we must part here. I have to go to our room for a book before I head to dinner. See you, Annabeth."

Annabeth had no reason to go back to her room. Plus, she still had some level of self-control around Reyna, so even though everything in her (except her stomach) was telling her to walk with Reyna back to their room, she simply left Reyna with a nod and walked to the dining hall where Piper, Percy and whoever else wasn't busy at the moment were probably waiting for her.

Wait...Had Reyna been flirting with her?

* * *

"I just don't understand if she was flirting with me." Piper really wished Annabeth all the luck in the world if she was missing these obvious clues.

"She called arguing with you 'stimulating'. That's like level 9 flirting right there."

"Ugh. Why would she flirt with me if she, herself, said there was nothing between us?"

"I don't think that's what she said exactly but you agreed with her?"

Ignoring Piper, Annabeth continued. "I can't deal with this. I was the confusing one in my relationship with Percy."

"Were you also the one prone to over-exaggeration and hysterics?"

"Not funny, Piper. Anyways, I need to do my homework and you were of no help."

"Can't help those who won't accept guidance, Annabeth."

"Your idea of guidance is experimenting with Reyna."

"Yes and you'd kill two birds with one stone."

"What are these two stones?"

"You'd get mandatory roommate experimentation out of the way and you'd know if you, you know, like-like Reyna."

"Like-like? Middle school dorms are on the other end of campus."

"Haha. Good deflection."

"Listen, all I know is that what you've been telling me is true. Reyna isn't a complete asshole. She's nice when we do our Literature homework and she was nice to me after Student Council. There's just some moments when she's less than pleasant."

"And do these moments outweigh the good ones?"

"Not even slightly. They just make me want to get to know her more. Learn what sets her off. What doesn't. What she likes. What she hates." Annabeth realized that she was starting to sound a bit like a love struck poet or something, so she quickly rectified the situation. "To avoid more of these moments and improve the efficiency and flow of our Student Council meetings, of course."

"Your huge crush on Reyna is very amusing."

"Bye, Piper. Calculus beckons." Without a second glance, Annabeth jumped off of Piper's bed and walked right out of her room.

* * *

Since they were leaving on Friday, Annabeth and Reyna decided to hold their weekly Literature meeting at the hotel. Annabeth was grateful because she was way too tired after soccer practice to actually do work on a Thursday. Their soccer team was pretty much undefeated, understandably, but they only played friendly matches to keep things fair. There wasn't much that mortals could do when a daughter of Hermes got behind the ball. And Half-Blood had more than enough daughters of Hermes to make up three-quarters of the team. What's more? Their goal-keeper was huge. Clarisse La Rue, a daughter of Ares, was practically big enough to block the entire goal just by standing in front of it. She was a fine goal keeper and wasn't allowed to play any other position because she got a bit confrontational (she once broke someone's leg during a scrimmage game) at times on the field.

Like every Thursday, Annabeth settled down in her bed after a hot shower, ready to watch some Netflix. As soon as she clicked on the show, her phone buzzed. It was a message from Percy that absolutely reeked of panic. He needed help with some last minute Algebra quiz prep. Annabeth heaved a great sigh. Gossip Girl, another show that Piper was "forcing" her to watch, would have to wait.

* * *

Friday was a pretty boring day, all things considered. Up until they decided to leave for the hotel. With Coach Hedge around, nothing could be boring. Everything was just loud and annoying. And oddly violent. They had to be armed when leaving the school's campus because monsters could strike at any time during their trip. Most teachers gave them a couple of swords and left it at that. Coach Hedge had them running drills for an hour in front of the bus because "the only monsters I want to see on this trip are dead ones and you guys are out of practice".

After their long and arduous pre-trip warm up, they were finally allowed to get on the bus. Piper was sitting beside Jason and Annabeth was not about to play the unlucky third wheel. While she was being indecisive, Nico snatched the seat beside Percy. Leo was probably going to blow her up, along with whatever it was that he was working on, and Hazel and Frank were looking cozy together. Thus, Annabeth took the open seat beside Reyna. Not because she wanted to. She just had no choice.

"Your sword stance is really neat," Reyna offered to Annabeth in lieu of a proper greeting.

"Thanks. Percy and I normally get sent on some pretty big quests together during summer vacation. We both have a lot of experience fighting."

"Prowess on the battle field and in the classroom. One girl really does it all, huh?"

"Well, two girls, at least. You're not so bad scholastically, yourself. And you handle your sword very well."

"It comes with being a daughter of Bellona. She'd be disappointed if I couldn't handle a sword, at the least."

"Well, school is less about raw knowledge and more about strategically studying. So, like my mom, I always have a plan."

"Speaking of plans, when should we meet to complete our Literature homework?"

"We're all eating together at the hotel but then we don't have anything else. An hour after dinner's done sounds good?"

"Sounds great." With that Reyna swiftly took out her earphones and plugged them into her phone. Apparently, Angry Birds was more entertaining than Annabeth was. Annabeth couldn't really argue with her there. And as long as Reyna didn't make a call, the cellphone wouldn't be letting monsters know that they were on the move. With nothing else to do and no one to talk to, Annabeth settled for reading the book that she and Reyna had to do their homework on. She hadn't read the chapter they were assigned to work on yet and she was pretty sure showing up to work with Reyna without being prepared would be some sort of death sentence. The chapter looked long and boring and Annabeth wondered if they'd ever read a book she liked for this class. This bus ride was never going to end.

* * *

It ended. To Coach Hedge's utter disappointment, there were no life-or-death battles. The most danger they had faced was when the bus' gas meter went down to empty when they were no gas stations nearby. When they lost all hope, it seemed the gods were on their side and they managed to find a gas station five minutes away from their hotel. Their hotel was actually a hotel, amazingly. Annabeth fully expected Coach Hedge to ignore her suggested hotel and book out some weird nature reserve where they'd have to fight for dinner or something.

After checking in and doing drills in Coach Hedge's room, they settled down for a nice dinner where not much was said because they'd driven two hours to get to the hotel and, after Coach Hedge's post-arrival drills, everyone was starving. During the hour before her and Reyna's meeting, Annabeth elected to shower because she smelled like food and sweat which was not attractive. Not that she wanted to be attractive for Reyna or anything. She was doing it for herself. If Reyna thought she smelled great, that'd be like one tenth of a square inch of icing on top of a million square inch cake. That is, it wouldn't be all that important or life changing or whatever.

Gods, she just needed to get going to Reyna and Piper's room. Coach Hedge assigned the rooms based on who he thought needed to spend more time together during this trip. Since Piper and Hazel were already roommates and Piper and Annabeth had been close since freshman year, that only left Piper and Reyna. After overhearing them planning their meeting, Piper assured Reyna that she and Jason were going to be taking a look at the hotel's facilities, leaving their room pretty much free for Reyna to use as the Literature meeting place.

Annabeth walked out of her room after saying goodbye to Hazel. All Student Council members had been able to get rooms on the same floor. Not many people were booking rooms in this hotel at the tail end of September. While it bothered Coach Hedge greatly that the guys and girls were on the same floor, he did assure them that he'd be guarding their rooms all night long with his trusty baseball bat. Very scary stuff.

Annabeth knocked on the door and prepared herself mentally for what was probably going to be a boring hour of Literature.


	4. part four

**a/n:** went off the grid because summer vacation made me kind of lazy. i'm hoping this chapter isn't completely horrible. my bad for any typos.

* * *

The Student Council had an extensive list of activities to get through on Saturday. They were going to do a couple of ice-breakers and, because Coach Hedge insisted, play some team sports which would totally build communication and trust. This made perfect sense. Until Coach Hedge decided that to form the ultimate bond, they had to play all the sports blindfolded. That made zero sense. Hopefully, he would get bored of the idea during their ice-breakers and think of something else that was just as "revolutionary" (yeah, right) but not quite as dangerous.

The ice-breakers were pretty standard get-to-know your teammates ones. As Annabeth knew everyone on her Student Council already, it was pretty boring. Hearing about Percy's love for blue food was boring when she had already herself made him a blue cake once. It had sucked but she had made it with Tyson (Percy's half-brother, cyclops and member of their blacksmithing club) and Percy had seemed to enjoy it in the end. Leo's mild annoyance with always being mistaken as a child of Hermes was also something she knew and sometimes chuckled about. Learning that Frank was a spelling-bee champion and not diagnosed with ADHD or dyslexia was interesting, though. Even if it was only because she felt she could relate to him more as an almost spelling bee champion, herself. She was kind of jealous but, in her head, her loss was kind of a huge fluke and she (mostly) got over it years ago. Reyna's favourite drink being hot chocolate was also surprising because she expected her to say something harsh like whiskey (Annabeth decided to ignore the drinking age) or something kind of boring and healthy like water.

Nothing new had really been learnt nor where there any sudden best friendships uncovered. No one had expected Coach Hedge's ice-breakers to be all that great, anyways. He was a self-proclaimed action kind of guy and ice-breakers generally involved too much talking. Plus, everyone who had been here before knew that the real bonding had less to do with the advisors that came with them every year and more to do with sneaking out of their rooms and hanging out all of Saturday night. There was just a special trust formed when someone hits you with that it's-2-AM-and-I've-had-no-sleep confession.

* * *

After lunch, Annabeth was wondering if they'd ever make it to 2 AM. Coach Hedge did not like how "unfriendly" they had looked during lunch and was now even more set on his plan to have them play sports while blindfolded. On one hand, it wasn't like they were playing sports with like swords and knives or even sticks, javelins or racquets but, as a soccer player, Annabeth knew how much damage a ball could do. There was a reason Clarisse La Rue was once banned from kicking the ball to her teammates. For a month, she could only throw it in the general direction of them. Not even to them. If mishandled, even a ball that was only thrown by Clarisse could end up making a player feel like they were in Tartarus' worst dodgeball game.

Coach Hedge was still handing out the blindfolds and Annabeth was wondering if she could make a run for it and save herself from the next few hours of stupidity. The only thing making it even the slightest bit bearable was that they were starting with soccer. They were playing four-a-side, open goal soccer because, as much as Coach Hedge believed they could pass the ball to each other and score with blindfolds on, he didn't believe someone could manage to goal keep without being able to see. There were nine of them, so Nico was made to be the official sub for both teams because he lost the rock-paper-scissors competition. Percy's suggestion that Nico just summon an undead soldier to play on a team was ignored. Annabeth's suggestion/plea that they play without blindfolds was also ignored.

The game had a terrible start. First, they had to drive to some kind of sports complex with enough courts to accommodate Coach Hedge's master plan. After getting there, Leo and Frank (the teams were also decided by some weird rock-paper-scissors shenanigans) had started the kick-off and, after being able to slowly dribble the ball in a kind of straight line for about twenty seconds, Leo got a bit ambitious. He tried to make a shot and the ball hit Jason right in the face, causing an official time out one minute into the game. Leo was extremely apologetic and Jason, being Jason, was just waving him off and assuring him that he was fine. Annabeth would have faked her death or something to get Coach Hedge to end the match. Luckily, the accident awakened Coach Hedge's common sense and they were allowed to play blindfold free. The goals were left undefended, though, because Coach Hedge thought the match would more exciting without goalies.

Annabeth thought this was finally her time to shine. She was a starter on the school's soccer team and, when the captain couldn't play (like those couple days after Clarisse had nailed her in the face with a ball), Annabeth was made to play as the captain. She was more than confident in her ability to lead the team to victory. Plus, Jason was on her team and he was the forward for the boys' soccer team. Hazel looked trustworthy and Reyna looked athletic enough, from a very brief once over Annabeth gave her and nothing more.

The game resumed with Jason taking a penalty shot. He kicked it to Annabeth who had gone long. She was between Leo and Piper so she kicked the ball back to Hazel who received it a bit clumsily but soon got comfortable behind it. Jason and Annabeth decided to move forward with their positions while Reyna hung back behind Hazel to keep up a bit of a defensive position. Annabeth got around Piper who was marking her pretty well and received the ball from Jason after he had picked it up from Hazel. By now, Annabeth had a clear view of the goal with Percy pulling up to run beside her and try for a tackle. She suspected that he would never expect her to take a shot from this distance. On a field with more people, she wouldn't. As it were, there was barely anyone on the field and she normally practiced shots from this distance during soccer practice. She kicked the ball, cleanly sending it into the back of the net. Percy let out a long low whistle beside her.

"Nice shot, Wise Girl," Percy commented, clapping her on the shoulder.

"Thanks, Seaweed Brain," she returned with a smirk. "Now, go get the ball so we can start playing again."

"Aye aye, Captain."

After Annabeth's goal, it quickly became painfully clear that the teams weren't balanced properly. Annabeth's team clearly had people who actually played the game regularly on it while the other team clearly didn't. After Hazel scored the team's fifth goal with no reply from the other team, Coach Hedge ended the game claiming that it was a one sided massacre and very, very boring to watch.

"Nice game," Annabeth said to Hazel who was standing centre field and catching her breath. "Have you played before?"

"Not really," Hazel answered. "I've just played in P.E. class a couple times."

"You did really well. You should think of joining up with Camp Blood's soccer team for the year that you're here."

"Thank you for the kind words," Hazel replied, fanning her face a bit.

"Any time, Hazel." Maybe Coach Hedge had been right about team sports causing some level of bond to form. The way Hazel had given it all to keep up with her and Jason and help contribute really endeared the girl to Annabeth. There was a certain honesty about Hazel that was just totally charming.

* * *

Basketball on the other hand? Not so charming. Frank, who was on the opposite team, steamrolled Annabeth's team. Apparently, he had been tall for a freshman, so the basketball team had scouted him. He had been awful, but they encouraged him to keep at it and he gradually got better. According to him, he was still a klutz at practically everything else.

Annabeth's team of Piper, Hazel and Nico (he couldn't get away with not playing two games even after losing rock-paper-scissors again), seriously didn't stand a chance and Coach Hedge found himself ending another game early. Frank found the time to reveal the tale of his basketball journey when Coach Hedge was trying to decide which other team games that could be played indoors existed.

* * *

"We're done here!" Coach Hedge yelled. Reyna had mentioned that she was on Jupiter's volleyball team when Coach Hedge suggested that they play volleyball. Reyna looked a bit peeved that she wouldn't get to play a sport she actually liked but Annabeth was relieved. She sucked at volleyball and she really wasn't about to make a complete fool of herself in front of Reyna. It was one thing when she could play a sport at a very basic level but just couldn't play as well as her competitors. This is what happened with basketball and Frank. However, she was just incapable of playing volleyball. The most she could do was kick a ball to keep it in play, which was technically a legal move, but she couldn't do much more.

Coach Hedge continued on his rant in the background while everyone just began leaving the sports center. He would join them eventually. Coach Hedge didn't need an audience when on his rants and Annabeth suspected he just liked hearing himself talk and that he made notes on phrases he came up with and liked so that he could reuse them in later rants. It was like some sort of rant-ception. During one of her P.E. classes at the end of the year, he had gone on a rant that was almost entirely composed of different rants he made during the school year. It had been weird and disorienting – it felt like she was reliving all of her PE classes at the same time – but it was also sort of amazing. Coach Hedge had a way with words. Only he could make killing, dying and maiming sound almost family friendly and common place in a high school gym.

Sadly, Coach Hedge could not find a way for them to continue bonding through team sports. Leo's insistences that he had never felt closer to Frank than when the boy had leaned over him and shot a three-pointer did nothing to sway the satyr and they were (finally) forced to head home and eat a quiet dinner.

* * *

They had chosen to host their hangout in Piper and Reyna's room because it was the furthest from Coach Hedge's. With there not being other people on the floor and the room being so far from Coach Hedge's, they were allowed to be a bit rowdy. Leo had brought his speakers to play some music to keep the gathering "chill". The music wasn't going to be the problem. Annabeth knew from experience that Half-blood tended to get a bit loud and (overly) competitive when playing any sort of game involving cards and she knew that Percy had brought a deck. She just hoped that he would be careful about unleashing the power of those cards. They were almost always a guaranteed headache, especially because Piper and Leo could argue for hours about "technicalities".

Annabeth rarely got to see Leo argue and Percy always assured her that cards just brought out the competitive spirit in everyone. He may have been right because she did find herself in the occasional spat with Piper over which Uno rules were real and which were made up. Gladly, they didn't have any Uno cards, so the group was able to avoid that particular disaster.

They started the hang out lightly with just small talk and general complaining about the games they were forced to play today.

"Jason and I totally faked the accident during soccer, by the way," Leo grinned. "So you're all welcome."

"Before the match started I told Leo to remember where I was and just kick the ball at me."

"I tried to dribble as slowly as possible because I lined myself up with Jason when I could still see. Then, wham! I let one fly!"

"He didn't even hit me that hard. It still hurt, of course, but it was pretty gentle with all things considered."

"I knew something was off when Leo was apologizing without making any jokes," Piper supplied.

"Same," Percy chimed in. "But I didn't want to say anything just in case he was turning over a new leaf or something."

Annabeth hadn't really considered the possibility but looking back, Leo's apology had been a bit over the top. She wondered why she never considered doing something like that. It was probably because she thought Coach Hedge wouldn't have stopped the game and just subbed Nico in if someone got injured. Kind of a harsh judgement but Coach Hedge had made some questionable decisions about when to people breaks in P.E. class before, so he hadn't exactly made a great case for himself.

After Leo and Jason had received all their thanks in Dorito chips, the party started to ramp up. Leo suggested Truth or Dare which was shot down because there weren't many dares to be done in a hotel room and Truth or Truth wasn't appealing, especially with Piper's Charmspeak on standby. However, after a round of suggestions and no real conclusions on what they should do (no one was really feeling the cards, thank the gods), they decided on Truth or Truth, much to Leo's amusement.

They forced Percy to chug the rest of the soda he was drinking so that they could use the bottle to play. As official soda chugger, Percy was allowed the first spin. It landed on Leo.

"Leo," Percy started. "Did you or did you not secretly message me: 'wow Hazel is such a babe' upon first meeting her?"

Wow. No one had expected such a quick dive into the deep truths. This was particularly scary because Percy had unleashed this one, totally ignoring any sort of bro-code or any code of friendship, really, and that was totally unlike him. Normally, Percy would keep any secret told to him to the grave. This kind of betrayal was totally unheard of with Percy and Annabeth could tell that Piper was totally living for it.

"Ugh," Leo groaned. "I did. In my defense, it was before I, or anyone, knew she and Frank were together. Frank, my dude, I've totally backed off."

"Sorry, Leo," Percy grinned. "I just wanted this one out there. No secrets if we're gonna work as a unit, right?"

Leo agreed, not seeming too embarrassed. Annabeth guessed it wasn't that deep, after all. Plus, Frank looked a bit glad. Maybe he had sensed some sort of intent from Leo? Frank and Percy were assigned as roommates. Had Frank expressed concern to Percy? Anyways, the guys seemed to be better off (Hazel was fanning herself again) after that truth, so maybe it wasn't that huge of a betrayal after all.

Leo spun the bottle and it landed on Piper. He smiled. "Piper, did you ever have a crush on Percy?" Seems like Leo just wanted to shine the awkward crush spotlight on someone else. Perhaps he was a bit more embarrassed than Annabeth had thought.

"Nope," answered Piper. "It's always just been Jason for me." Piper took a hold of the bottle and briefly made eye contact with Annabeth. Oh gods, please, no. She knew exactly where Piper would go if the bottle landed on her. And as the gods would have it, Annabeth was about to go down. The bottle had slowed to a stop and pointed directly at her.

Piper smiled like a cat about to capture a bird and Annabeth considered running to the bathroom. Piper was about to ask the question that she thought she knew the answer to. If Annabeth lied, she was about to get Charmspoke to next century into telling the truth. Not that it'd be a lie if she answered Piper's question negatively because all feelings she had for Reyna were purely hypothetical.

"Is your hair naturally blonde?" Piper asked, smirk still in place.

Annabeth narrowed her eyes at Piper. The girl had just totally psyched her out. Why was she even getting psyched out? If Piper had asked her if she feelings for Reyna, she would have been able to confidently say "no", definitely.

"Yes, it is," Annabeth answered. She quickly spun the bottle, not really caring who it landed on. Of course, it landed on Reyna. Annabeth found herself at a bit of a loss. She didn't really know anything about Reyna, so she couldn't ask any interesting truths that totally weren't awkward and uncomfortable. She settled on, "Favourite part of the camp so far?"

"The soccer match, probably," Reyna shrugged.

Huh. Reyna didn't seem that involved in the soccer game, to be honest. She had passed the ball to Annabeth and Jason a couple times but she didn't really get any chances to flex her defense because they were almost always on the offensive.

"Why?" Annabeth asked.

"Isn't that another truth? Spin me again to find out." Reyna fired back with a small smile. She spun the bottle.

Annabeth was definitely going to spin her again. She really wanted to know why Reyna had found the soccer game to be the best part. Maybe it had been because they won and it was a team effort? She hadn't gotten to play basketball because she had come second to last in the weird rock-paper-scissors fiasco. Did she just like soccer? Had it been because she had played alongside Annabeth? Gods, she suddenly had to know. She absolutely had to spin Reyna again.

* * *

Sadly, that night, Annabeth didn't find out what made Reyna find the soccer game so great.


	5. part five

**a/n:** here we go again. i don't know why i'm so horrendous at updating during the summer. school's starting next week so i'll probably update more when i have actual responsibilities to avoid. once again, i hope the chapter's good and not riddled with mistakes because wow it's 3 AM.

* * *

Annabeth didn't see the hype behind hating Mondays. Like sure, they weren't always great in comparison to a weekend of fun and relaxation but every Monday that came meant she was closer to graduation. Graduation meant she could go to college, get her degree and then make use of all the experiences that her internships were supposedly giving her. She would go out into the world and, eventually, there'd be a building or few that would be of her own design, standing tall and housing families or businesses. So yeah, Mondays were pretty okay.

However, the retreat and then kicking Percy and Leo's butts at FIFA and being treated to a pizza on Sunday (again) had been great. Annabeth honestly didn't understand why Percy and Leo kept challenging her. They knew nothing about soccer nor did they know half of the controls. Mostly, they just passed the ball back and forth between their players and then made extremely bad shots when they were anywhere near the goal. Annabeth wasn't complaining, though. Constantly winning FIFA was way better than being demolished in Halo by Percy and Leo. Maybe they were, in a weird way, paying her back for all the pizzas she had bought them last semester because of Halo.

Anyways, after an admittedly very great weekend, Annabeth was, not for the first time, finding herself syncing up with the high school hive mind and begrudging this Monday. Having to go to Literature, a class which she totally despised, was definitely not going to help her mood. Outside of providing Annabeth with an opportunity to interact with Reyna outside of Student Council and the four walls of their bedroom, Literature was not doing much to endear itself to Annabeth. And up until about a week and a half ago, she didn't even think that Literature forcing her to work with Reyna was a good thing. So there was that.

Sighing, Annabeth pushed into the room which held her doom. And if she died, Piper, Reyna Jason and Leo would witness her final moments wherein she pathetically struggled over Homer.

* * *

Lunch held a bit of a surprise. Every day, Annabeth ate lunch with Piper, who was the only out of the rest of their friend group with the same lunch period. Literally everyone else had the lunch period right before theirs. More often than not, a couple of other people they knew from their classes would join them. This time it was different. As soon as Annabeth and Piper sat down after collecting their food, Reyna and Hazel seemed to materialize out of nowhere holding trays.

"Mind if we sit here?" Reyna asked.

"Go ahead," Piper answered immediately. She probably thought she was doing Annabeth some huge favour.

"Frank is coming too. I hope you guys don't mind," Hazel provided as she folded her napkin in her lap.

"That's great, actually," Piper said. Now, Annabeth was suspicious. Sure, Piper was friendly, but that response seemed a bit enthusiastic. Annabeth surveyed the people at the table. With Frank coming, there'd be five of them. He and Hazel weren't the type of couple to completely ignore their friends (and she'd say they were all friends now after that surprisingly successful retreat) when they were together. However, they would possibly get distracted by each other which would leave Piper, Reyna and Annabeth to make conversation.

Oh.

Of course. Piper probably was going to try to "be a good friend and work her match making skills". This was a direct quotation of what Piper had said to her during a chemistry lab because for some reason a lot of their conversations came back to Reyna. Annabeth trusted Piper not to do anything too embarrassing because she knew that Piper did only have her best interests at heart, as misguided as she was.

"Anything important on the Student Council agenda for this week?" Reyna was all-business immediately. Annabeth thought they were sitting down for a friendly chat. She found herself a bit disappointed. Annabeth was distracted by the sound of Frank's tray hitting the table, but she couldn't wait too long to answer Reyna.

"We have our first General Assembly on Wednesday. Aside from that, not much else," Annabeth answered. General Assemblies were the worst. They were just an hour of the Student Council representatives from each homeroom voicing ridiculous concerns and asking for equally ridiculous changes. Last year when she was vice president to Thalia, some freshman complained that there not enough "hotties" in his homeroom. Annabeth had been too busy trying not to gag to hear Thalia's answer, but it seemed to have been appropriately diplomatic because no one started yelling or anything. Annabeth only hoped she would have the Grace, pun very much intended, required to deal with idiots like that one.

"I was wondering if you guys were ever going to have one." Piper sighed. Trust Reyna to, unwittingly or not, say exactly the thing to set Annabeth off.

"Excuse me?" Hazel and Frank exchanged uncomfortable glances.

"Jupiter would have had about 2 by now." Annabeth tensed. She thought they were over this. Reyna had apologized for overstepping and being overly critical. Why was see doing the same exact thing she had thought to apologize for doing? Then again, maybe Reyna wasn't being rude. Annabeth knew she could be rash when people brought up the Student Council. She was in charge, so it annoyed her immensely when the Student Council was questioned or berated. It was a pride thing and something she really needed to control. Deciding to take her first steps toward control today, Annabeth bit back her retort and observed Reyna, trying to get a read on the situation. She had a small smile on her face and looked oddly thoughtful. She didn't seem to be engaging Annabeth in some pissing match. She could actually be trying to make conversation. Okay, Annabeth could do conversation.

"Yeah, well, some of the geniuses in the student body should not be given more time than necessary to express their ground breaking ideas on what can improve the school."

"I hear you," Reyna smiled and Annabeth found herself smiling too. Piper gave her a very not subtle thumbs up. Annabeth tried not to glare too hard at Piper in case someone saw her glaring and then looked at Piper and saw the thumbs up. Then they'd wonder what the thumbs up was for which would not lead to anything good.

"Oh, Piper," Frank turned to the girl in question. "Before I forget to ask...when's the Economics test? I need to start studying for it."

"It's today." Frank groaned and Piper felt it for him. Who hadn't been in this position at least once before? "I can try to give you a crash course."

"Don't waste your time on me. I'm hopeless at what we're doing now. I really needed the practice." Looking at Frank's form slumped over the table, Annabeth really was starting to believe that Mondays were the absolute worst.

* * *

Wednesday, Annabeth thought, were evidently Monday's slightly-less-so-but-still-evil twin. After a fairly uneventful Tuesday, Annabeth was feeling fairly relaxed. Well, as relaxed as someone could be after Clarisse heckled them after one missed shot. Gods, that girl was such a bully. And if Annabeth had any authority, Clarisse would be at some military school somewhere learning discipline. And hey, she could flourish there since she was a daughter of Ares and all. Annabeth would revisit this later. With a little polishing, this idea may actually make it through Mr. D's thick, stubborn skull.

Anyways, Wednesday started out pretty well. Aside from Greek Literature, a subject Annabeth still didn't think was all that necessary, nothing annoyed her. Until Clarisse showed up and called her "a talentless hack who should stick to books". After that one, Annabeth found herself a little annoyed. Annabeth knew to ignore Clarisse, though. At least she was a senior and wouldn't be around next year to bother Annabeth and cause bodily (and emotional) harm to her soccer teammates. Small mercies.

* * *

Lunch was pretty great. Hazel, Frank and Reyna sat with her and Piper again. Talking to the quite couple outside of Student Council was quickly endearing them to Annabeth. And every time Reyna laughed at something she said, Annabeth felt like never shutting up and inevitably looking like an idiot so that she could cause that laugh again. And that's when Annabeth knew.

Annabeth prided herself on being very self-aware. After all, she had been the one to point out that the beginning of her relationship with Reyna was alarmingly similar to that of her relationship with Percy. She could deal with all the fluttering that being near Reyna caused because that was a natural reaction to being near someone you found very attractive and Reyna was all kinds of attractive. There was no denying that. She could understand finding herself intrigued by Reyna. She'd never seen someone her age with their life so together before. They were almost a month into living together and she never saw Reyna's side of the room with a book out of place. Even further, Reyna was always on top of her school work. She was so well spoken all the time and always impeccably dressed. The girl was basically perfect, so Annabeth understood her fascination with Reyna on a fundamental level.

But the fact that she had even been entertaining thoughts of discarding her pride and intentionally acting like an idiot to get a laugh out of Reyna was proof enough. She was a goner. She definitely had some sort of crush on Reyna and Piper was totally going to be all "I told you so". But, even as annoying as Piper was, she was her best friend and this was definitely a development that her best friend should hear about – no matter how annoying said best friend's gloating was going to be.

* * *

After that startling realization at lunch, Annabeth just wanted to go relax and do something simple because liking Reyna (or just finally acknowledging that she did or whatever) was going to make her life infinitely more complex. Soon enough, she'd have to decide if she was going to pursue this, get over it or take it one day at a time and see where things led her because she just wasn't someone to stand idle. Instead of going to her room, though, she had to go to Math, Biology and PE. If that wasn't enough work, she would have to preside over the General Assembly after school.

For the most part, her classes went by pretty quickly. The only exception was her PE class which Reyna was also in. For the most part, they didn't have to interact in PE because, at the start of the term, it was usually just them being taught how to milk the most benefits out of exercising. However, Aegle, their PE instructor and a goddess of good health, decided it was time for them to start doing exercises that could only be done in pairs. Reyna had met her eyes during this announcement and given her a nod. Annabeth could only nod back, cementing herself as Reyna's partner for the stretches. This was all and well except Annabeth hadn't really decided how she was to be acting about Reyna yet.

Aegle finally finished telling them all the theory behind the stretches and instructed them to find a pair. Annabeth waited as Reyna made her way over.

"Ready, partner?" Reyna's hair was in a perfectly centered ponytail and her Half-blood PE shirt was a more vibrant orange than anyone else's (at this point, Annabeth knew she was being cheesy but she couldn't stop).

"As ready as I'll ever be," Annabeth muttered to herself, resigning herself to a half hour of Reyna's hands being all over her – something she couldn't decide if it was a blessing or curse.

* * *

The General Assembly was exactly as hellish as Annabeth expected it to be. The complaints and suggestions for the most part were reasonable. However, some idiots just had to be heard. This particular idiot had to be heard every year. Who kept electing him as homeroom representative?

"I just think that we should be allowed to look at pretty things while in boring homeroom discussions."

Annabeth really didn't have the strength to deal with this guy. After fending off demands for less homework, tests and class time for the better part of an hour, she was just tired. Reyna must have sensed this because she stepped forward.

"The Student Council is unable to attend to your request because, not only is it completely unreasonable, it is extremely disrespectful to those in your homeroom."

And then for the rest of the General Assembly, Reyna took over the speaking. She would look to Annabeth who still had the final say on which suggestions the Student Council would be taking into consideration, but she would explain why they would or wouldn't take certain suggestions on her own, each time articulating exactly what Annabeth herself would have wanted to say.

"Thanks so much, Reyna," Annabeth said, after the General Assembly (finally) came to a close and the rest of the Student Council members left to get them a table in the dining hall.

"It's no problem. You seemed tired and I wanted to help."

"Even so, you didn't have to. It's my responsibility."

"Well, isn't it the responsibility of Student Council members to support their president?"

"Yeah." Annabeth did her best to suppress the pleasure she felt when Reyna referred to her as her president.

"Don't worry about it, then. It was my responsibility to help you." Reyna smiled. "And I totally get why you don't do this more often. I wouldn't be able to deal with hearing these guys more often."

"As I said before, some of these guys really shouldn't be given more time than absolutely necessary."

"Well, will you allow me to go above my duty and walk you to dinner?"

"Yes, please. I'm starving."

For the first time since the Student Councils of Half-blood and Jupiter merged, it finally felt like a partnership.

When Annabeth found herself wanting her newfound level of partnership with Reyna to extend beyond just Student Council, it cemented what she had come to realize during lunch and she made up her mind. She had to pursue the possibility of being with Reyna, no matter what.


	6. part six

a/n: wow almost a whole year. mb guys. real life got super crazy. as always all mistakes are mine and i really hope this is cohesive and stuff.

* * *

Okay, so making the heartfelt declaration to woo Reyna was definitely not the hard part. Actually thinking about how to act on it was. She was drawing blanks on her own. Not for the first time in her life, Annabeth resigned to the fact that she would have to defer to Piper's wisdom. Even if the embarrassment of admitting Piper was right all along would literally kill her.

Annabeth found herself in Piper and Hazel's room after dinner. As always, Hazel was off somewhere with Frank. And wasn't it just proof that she was finally bonding with Hazel because the room suddenly became Piper and Hazel's room and not just Piper's room. It was funny how before she never even glanced at Hazel's side but now she was taking it all in. The books, the photos and even the way her side of the room looked lived in but clean. Her side of the room was as lovely as she was. She really hoped Hazel took her advice and considered joining the soccer team. It would be nice to have more opportunities to interact with her.

Wait. This wasn't the time for Annabeth to be getting sentimental over her and Hazel's evolving friendship. It was time to be talking about a different girl for entirely different reasons. Annabeth was finding it hard to outright tell Piper that she had been right all this time, though. Maybe she'd make up some story about Reyna doing something cool in PE and creating these feelings inside her today. Then Piper couldn't have been completely right because this crush was a new development and not a pre-existing thing like she had assumed. There was only one problem - Piper probably wouldn't believe her.

After running through a couple of scenarios which all ended in Piper coming to the conclusion that she had been right all on her own, Annabeth decided that she might as well fess up and hand Piper the bragging rights which she would hopefully use immediately and only once. Annabeth flopped down on Piper's bed to make sure her last moments on Earth, before she died of embarrassment and/or Piper's teasing, would be comfortable.

"Pipes," Annabeth started, already cursing the cruel fate that would surely befall her. "You may have been right about me with the Reyna thing."

Piper just smiled. "I was wondering why you were just standing up and not saying anything. Must have took a lot out of you to admit that."

"Would you please just say 'I told you so' and get it over with?"

"I would but seeing you try to deny it since that kiss has been reward enough. Plus, I can tell it's really tearing you up, so I will hold off making jokes." Cruel fate avoided. Piper really was one of the best friends ever (sometimes).

"So what's the game plan?" Annabeth sat up. "And yes. I am lost enough to come to you for help."

"Well, you've come to the right place." The grin on Piper's face was way too wide for Annabeth's comfort. "As a daughter of Aphrodite..."

"Can we go back to the time when you hated that Aphrodite was your mom? Cause you were nothing like your half-siblings, blah, blah blah." Piper cut Annabeth a look.

"As a daughter of Aphrodite, my match-making skills are top-notch. And I never hated that Aphrodite was my mom. I just strongly disliked Drew."

"Fair enough." Annabeth couldn't argue with that. Drew, who she finally remembered as the asshole who doubted her running skills, was simply a lot. In all of the worse ways.

"Stop distracting me. The right answer to your question on what to do with Reyna...," Piper began. Annabeth looked at her intently, awaiting the love wisdom that could only come from a daughter of Aphrodite. "...is to just continue whatever you're currently doing."

"Gee, gosh, golly. I would have never thought of that! Wow, continue existing within her general area! Brand new information and stellar strategy right here, folks."

"Well, since you think you're only existing near her, you don't think you're doing anything in particular, but I can tell you that you are. As a daughter of Aphrodite, I can sense possibility."

"Whatever is that supposed to mean?"

"Just know that when I pick an OTP, I'm never wrong." How Piper made the inanest statement sound vaguely promising, Annabeth didn't know, but she left Piper's room resolved to keep on doing whatever she was doing. On second thought, some Charmspeak may definitely have been involved there.

* * *

Typically, Annabeth didn't think to knock on her bedroom door. Last year, her and Piper agreed to just put all their clothes on in the bathroom after showering, and, thankfully, Piper and Jason kept all their devious activities confined to his room.

When Annabeth opened the door, she was greeted with the usual scene. Reyna's side, as clean and neat as always, and her side, looking very messy in comparison. However, this time, it had the additional detail of one naked Reyna standing in the middle. Reyna turned to look at the noise of the door opening and Annabeth immediately slammed it shut. She'd just wait outside and will the image of Reyna naked to leave her brain without leaving any trace of it being there.

Eventually, after Annabeth's seventh recitation of the laws of motion, Reyna opened the door. She was now dressed, thankfully, so Annabeth was now slightly sure she wasn't having some weird, oddly realistic sex dream. Also, Reyna looked bashful and a bit embarrassed. Since Annabeth had never seen that expression on Reyna before and she doubted her brains ability to spontaneously create it, she was now almost fully sure it wasn't a sex dream.

"Hey, sorry about that," Reyna said, stepping away from the door and giving Annabeth room to walk in.

"No problem," Annabeth barely managed to reply. She walked into the room and dived right onto her bed, burying her face into her pillow. The sight of Reyna was making the memory she tried to delete from her treacherous brain come back, this time with a decidedly different ending.

"I'm done with the bathroom, if you need it," Reyna sounded so far away and Annabeth was hearing double. The Reyna in her brain was offering to help her shower. This made no sense as she clearly had just finished hers. After realizing that Reyna might have been waiting for a reply, Annabeth provided Reyna with a thumbs-up to give her an indication that she was heard.

Annabeth took quite some time to find the power to do her nightly routine then go to sleep that night.

* * *

Friday – a day of endless possibilities. Well, not endless, per se, but, as usual, Annabeth and Reyna were going to meet and work on their Literature homework. Today, they'd finally have some time alone and Annabeth would be able to put Piper's astoundingly helpful advice to "keep doing what she was doing" into play. Or had she been following Piper's advice by doing nothing? Annabeth shook her head. The confusion currently plaguing her was just proof of how dumb Piper's advice was, but she'd stick to it until she came up with a better plan herself.

Right now, Annabeth was just killing time in the courtyard until their designated meeting time. They were going to meet in their room because the library had been closed early for maintenance. Annabeth didn't want to assume things, but she was pretty sure this was a big old chance, handed to her directly by Aphrodite. Annabeth was busy fiddling with a setting on her phone when she heard her name. Looking up, she saw Percy walking towards her.

"Yo, Annabeth," Percy said, sitting beside her on the bench. "What's cracking?"

"Nothing much. What's new with you?"

"Just played an awesome round of Halo with Frank. I didn't know he had it in him, but you should've seen him. Literally amazing!"

"I doubt I'd even understand enough of what was happening to know if it was amazing or not."

"You have a pretty good point there. You do suck, like, majorly."

"Wow, I expect this casual disrespect from Leo. Not from you, Percy." Annabeth was actually pretty hurt by his brutal honesty, but what could she do? He wasn't wrong.

"Well, you know me, I just like to keep it real. How're things with you and Reyna?" Yeah. Trust Percy to keep it too real. Annabeth knew it was better to play it cool.

"What do you mean?"

"Annabeth, I know you totally have a thing for Reyna. It's been obvious ever since you guys' little mishap." Trapped and not seeing a way out because Annabeth knew Percy was the last person she'd be able to lie to, Annabeth decided to just be upfront about it. What was the point of hiding it anyway?

"Yeah...I really do," Annabeth admitted, a bit sheepishly. "I have a meeting with her later in our room, so..."

"Cool stuff." Percy's phone started vibrating and he jumped up. "I gotta go. Me and Grover planned to hang out."

"See you." Annabeth waved and Percy started walking off. He didn't make it far before he decided to stop and turn around.

"You're welcome for the assist, by the way."

"Assist?" For the second time today, Annabeth was genuinely confused.

"Come on, Wise Girl," Percy said, maybe a bit too sarcastically but not unkindly. "Didn't you think it was weird that no one from our Student Council spoke up when that guy was hassling you at the General Assembly?" Now that Annabeth properly thought about it, yeah, it was weird. No one from their Student Council said anything. No one...Oh gods.

"Please don't tell me the entire Student Council was in on it?"

"Yeah, duh," Percy grinned. "You guys are obvious and we love it!"

"I'm going to die. My chest actually hurts. I think I'm having a heart attack."

"Well, try to not to drop dead before your 'meeting' with Reyna, okay?" Percy winked. He actually left this time, leaving Annabeth in a state of shock and potential heart failure.

* * *

After spending twenty minutes trying to decide if it was a good idea to make a group chat to confront all of her nosey, traitorous friends, Annabeth decided that the headache she'd undoubtedly receive from talking to Piper, Leo and Percy simultaneously (especially about her love life) was definitely not worth it. As if it realized that she was finally done having her inner debate, Annabeth's phone rang out signaling that she had ten minutes to get to her room for her meeting.

Annabeth heaved a big sigh and she got up. She had totally forgotten to come up with a plan of action. She was just going to have to go into the meeting blind. Hopefully, Reyna would send some loud signals that Annabeth would be able to pick up despite her lack of vision. Evidently, she had been, if Percy's report was enough to go by. It took two to be obvious, right? Annabeth would just have to hope so.

* * *

Turns out, it definitely did not take two to be obvious. Which, Annabeth should have known considering how ridiculous that thought even was. It only took one idiot, and, news flash, the idiot was her. Reyna had to have known Annabeth liked her by now. Annabeth had spent the entire time they were working "subtly" glancing over at Reyna, and she had been caught every time.

Once was an accident. Three times was kind of creepy. The amount of times Annabeth was caught screamed "I have the hugest crush on you and, yes, I am creepy".

However, Annabeth could see the light at the end of the tunnel. A small speck of hope. Instead of getting more and more creeped out, Reyna had just smiled at her each time. She had even cutely tucked a strand of hair behind her hair one time. The fact that Reyna hadn't run to the hills because of Annabeth's creepiness surely meant something, right?

Annabeth wagered there was just one way to find out. She had to let Reyna know how she felt. The big question, though, was how would she. Annabeth had never really confessed to someone before. With Luke, her childhood friend who was a couple years older than her, there had been no chance, so she kept quiet. He had turned out to be the biggest douchebag ever so Annabeth thanked the gods that she dodged that bullet. Percy had been a bit different. She had just spontaneously kissed him while they were on a quest and then ran off, leaving him to fill in the blanks. It had taken him a while after the kiss to figure it all out, but he had eventually arrived at the right conclusion.

Unfortunately, Annabeth didn't see kissing Reyna in her near future. When she had kissed Percy, it had been a dire, kind of life-or-death situation, and, as much as she hated the subject, Literature homework really did not compare. She didn't have the bravery that only pure adrenaline could provide right now. Annabeth would just have to be smart about this, even if Reyna made using her brain super hard.

Annabeth closed her book. They had been done for the past fifteen minutes. It was now or never.

"Reyna." Reyna looked up immediately. Great. Annabeth had succeeded in getting her attention.

"Hm?" Reyna hummed when Annabeth had paused too long. "What's the matter, Annabeth?"

"Nothing," Annabeth replied. "Just wanted to say your name." Annabeth cringed. She had messed this up already, but, surely, she could turn this around. She just had to think.

"Interesting. I wonder what caused the sudden desire?" Reyna was playing with her. Annabeth thought it appropriate to respond in kind.

"I wonder too," Annabeth shrugged. "Guess we'll both be left wondering, huh?"

"At this point, I welcome anything that isn't Literature. It's a bit boring."

"Literature is more than a bit boring."

"Yeah, so let's talk about something else. We should use this time to brainstorm on why you wanted to just say my name." There was a glint in Reyna's eyes. Amusement or, perhaps, mischief?

"It's a pretty name. It really just rolls of the tongue."

"So, you've grown fond of my name?" Reyna mused. "I'm a bit jealous of it." Annabeth collected all of her courage. This was her opening.

"You shouldn't be," Annabeth answered, coolly. Her coolness almost betrayed exactly how much she had practiced, just in case a moment like this came along. "Your name isn't the only thing I've 'grown fond of'."

Reyna understood what she was implying immediately. "I've grown quite fond of you, as well. Friendship is wonderful, isn't it?"

Annabeth levelled a gaze at Reyna. Her heart was beating out of her chest, but not in a completely painful way. Reyna's face was unreadable, offering only the barest hint of a smile, but the sparkle in her eyes gave enough of her away. Reyna was definitely onto Annabeth, and she was playing with her. Not cruelly, though. This was more of a gesture indicating that yes, she understood what Annabeth was doing, and she was allowing it. Why was she allowing it? Annabeth was almost certain it was because Reyna felt the same way.

Annabeth relaxed and decided to fold this time. She had pretty much confirmed what she wanted to know. She would let Reyna know she was making a tactical retreat with her next reply.

"Yeah, friendship really is amazing."

It was definitely game time.


End file.
